Rabbi Yehuda said: It is indeed so, and therefore it is written, "Remember the Shabbat day to keep it holy" (Ex. 20:8) and: "You shall be holy, for I, the L-rd your G‑d, am Holy" (Lev. 19:2) and, "And call the Shabbat a delight, the honorable holiness of G‑d."

We have learned that on this day all the souls of the righteous delight in the pleasures of Atika Kadisha, the most hidden of all. One spirit of this delight of Atika Kadisha, is extended through all the worlds. It ascends and descends and spreads abroad to all the holy children, to all the guardians of the Torah so that they enjoy perfect rest, forgetting all cares, all penalties and all hard service, as it is written: "And it shall come to pass on the day that G‑d shall give you rest from your sorrow and from your anger, and from the hard work which you were made to do". (Isaiah 14:3)

Therefore the Shabbat is weighed equally to all the Torah, and he who keeps the Shabbat is regarded as one who fulfills the whole Torah. It is written: "Fortunate is the man that does this, and the son of man that grasps it, that keeps the Shabbat from being profaned, and keeps his hand from doing any evil". (Isaiah 56:2) From this we understand that he who keeps the Shabbat is as if he kept the whole Torah.

BeRahamim LeHayyim: Why did the Ari and Chida include this section? What do they want us to learn?

What a promise: by "keeping" Shabbat, we "keep" the entire Torah. It is that simple. For us we need to determine how to keep Shabbat better, whether in law or spirit, whether in action, word, or thought. The last is the hardest: how to keep our mind-train from contemplating secular subjects. Oh, if we could just open a mental drawer, load it up with our weekday worries, and shut it up for 25 hours! Any suggestions will be warmly welcome.

What does this mean to you, and what does it mean for your Shabbat?

[With this, we finish the sections of Parashat Yitro that are learned on Shabbat in Sefardi Siddurim, as well as Daniel Matt's commentary—thanks!]

Bracketed annotations from Metok Midevash and Sulam commentaries
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